344. The Ogre of Indiana

You're listening to an ONO media podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. And if you are watching on video, I don't know the last time I showered or anything. I don't know what's going on. I guess you guys are just going through this journey with us. If you're watching on Netflix, you see a little human being with me. It is our human being that we made. That is our baby. In a very protective big sister who loves hers so very much. Yeah. Yeah. We're just going to kind of update you at things they're going to look like. So we came down to do a little intro real quick. It's not going to be us doing a full video, but right after this intro plays, the robe of full video, it's going to be a video that majority of you have never seen before or heard before for those who have heard it or seen it. It means you're subscribed to our Patreon. And we're going to send a separate message out on extra content. We're going to be putting there instead just to even everything out. Anyways, until we got going. So majority of you have never heard or listened to this episode before. If you're upset that you cannot see our little baby girl, sorry, right now that is on purpose as we just navigate exactly how we want to figure out what we want to do with her social media wise and public wise. And I mean, to be honest, oh my gosh, guys, these new hormones are no joke. All I do is just cry and then. True. Pain been crying a lot. That's okay. It's hard being a mommy. She is a trooper. She did such a good job. I guess we should up to you. Everything went smooth. Payton is feeling, I mean, I'm stitched up and in a diaper bomb feeling good. She's feeling good and things are good. Baby is extremely healthy. She's just so perfect little angel. It's just. She's very cute. Here's the back of her head. So crazy props to anyone who's done this before. It's so crazy. And I'm actually really excited that you guys kind of get to, I mean, think like they started this journey with us back when we were just little kids getting married. And now here we are with our own little kid. And I'm so grateful that you guys are here and that you've stuck around and that you get to go through this with us. But this is our little update. I'm matching. Oh, cute. About what. Yeah, what the next couple weeks are going to look like. Again, thank you for being patient. It's new content. If you've heard the content before, you're also still getting new content somewhere else. So yeah, we love you. We do hope to get back to work sooner rather than later. But yeah, just kind of navigating this, this new part of our life while keeping you guys updated and along for the ride. We're actually recording this before we even posted anything on social media. I don't know if there will be anything on social media yet. But if you want any updates, usually follow us on Instagram and you can hear any updates there. If you don't give a crap, don't blame you and you're just here for the true common content. Just get ahead like 20 more seconds. It'll be applying. But thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. I don't know. Anything else? No. We love you guys. We're doing great. Mornelands are doing great. All four of us. Daisy's handling it. Good. She's just very in love and concerned about the new baby. But yeah, things are going good and I guess we'll just continue to keep you guys updated. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Peyton Moreland. I need the husband. I'm a husband. Welcome back. Another Monday. Another episode. Here we are. Thank you for being here. I'm a reminder for those watching for the first time. Peyton is telling me a case that I have no idea what's going to happen. I haven't heard this. Yeah. Just a reminder on that. I love true crime. Peyton loves true crime. I've always hated it. I'm getting more. What is that? Well, because everyone now is like, do you really hate it? Do you really hate it? Do you? I mean, hate the strong word. You're going back on your. But I don't enjoy it. But you don't mind sitting here? No, no, no. That's a little far. I mind sitting here. You just. So I guess I go with hate. Yeah. I watch still true crime documentaries all the time. You won't watch it when you. No. I'm like, hey, I'm going to go watch something else. It's true. Reminder for those who want bonus episodes. We have Patreon and we have Apple subscriptions. It's a Spotify subscription. You can hear all of our audio at free when we also post bonus episodes. So go and check that out. Jumping into my 10 seconds here for those who play golf. I golfed at a place in Las Vegas called Shadow Creek. Extremely expensive. I'll probably never do it again. But it was a once in a lifetime experience. If you golf, you should know the name. If not, then you can go look it up on Google. Crazy experience. I'm definitely not good enough to golf there, but it was fun. I don't know how to explain it. It was probably the nicest golf course. It is the nicest golf course that I've ever golfed at. So yeah, that's what I did. It was fun. I had a good time. Daisy is over here going. Absolutely insane. She got this. That's good to say. She got this toy. She is. She doesn't do this. No. If you're on audio, go watch video right this second because Daisy has a cow. Do you stop him now? Because we embarrassed her? Yeah. But she has been digging the insides of this cow out the entire intro. That's all we have for you guys. Um, bagel shops coming soon. Stay tuned. It's coming. Peyton's going to be baking bagels there, so you definitely will want to check that out. And on that note, let's hop into today's case. Our sources for today's episode are ATV dot com biography dot com hell's princess legends of America dot com most notorious the daily beast dot com dark histories podcast wiki tree and as always, our sources are always listed in our episode notes. Sometimes I do keep some out, so I don't spoil this story. So feel free to go check the rest of them out. Now before we get into it, this episode contains discussions of alcohol abuse, domestic violence, suicide and murder. So please listen with care. Have you ever had that moment when you realized someone that you thought you knew was actually kind of a total stranger? Maybe you thought you were friends just to find out they were using you. What if they weren't just lying about their intentions, but kind of about who they were entirely now, obviously, we know there's a word for that nowadays. It's called catfishing. And luckily these days, it's not that hard to reveal. You just do a quick search, a reverse image, look up due diligence will probably lead you to the truth. But if you flash back to the early 1900s, when there was no internet and you had to just take people at their word, well, catfishing was a lot easier being a con man was a lot easier. I was going to say, I bet you it was way easier to scam people back then, rifting, the whole thing. Granted, I know there's different scams now because we have the internet. Yeah. So I guess it's different. I feel like everyone now is a little on edge, just like a little, we've heard a little too many horror stories with the internet. But if you think back then, you live in a local town. Some newbie comes through and it's like, oh, I have this amazing, I do this and this and I mean, why would you not believe them? And this is at the center of today's case. So in the year 1901, literally early 1900s, 30 year old Peter Gunness found himself in this situation. Okay. Peter was originally from Norway, but he had immigrated years ago to Indiana. Now he was married with a child and another one on the way. He had a thriving business as a butcher and he was really well liked in his Indiana community. But then on September 1st, 1901, everything changed. Peter lost his wife during the birth of their second child. So he now needed help caring for his two kids, one, a newborn. So he immediately starts looking for another wife and as fate would have it, he reconnected with a fellow Norwegian immigrant, a woman he had boarded with years before, a woman, named Bell Surrenson. Now Peter had always liked Bell ever since they immigrated. He loved her Norwegian home cooking and he took comfort in her company as she was also widowed at this time. So now with both of them, single, they decided to move out of the friend zone and they got married on April 1st, 1902. And Peter actually moved into Bell's house, making a family with Peter's two kids and her three. So now five kids for them. They should have been one big happy family. But terrible things started to happen almost immediately. So on April 6th, less than a week after their marriage, Peter's youngest daughter died while Bell was taking care of her. Again, she's just 7 months old. And a few months later, on December 16th, 1902, tragedy struck again. Bell's eldest daughter, 12-year-old Jenny, ran to the neighbor's house in the middle of the night. She told the neighbor they needed help because something was wrong with her stepdad. So the neighbor runs over to the family's house and they find Peter on the living room floor with his face covered in blood. Okay. Peter has no pulse, so the neighbor sent his son off to find a doctor. And he stayed behind to comfort Peter's wife and kids. To find a doctor. I mean, it's 1902. It's just weird. So a little while later, the neighbor boy returned with the doctor who also happened to be the local coroner. And by that time, Peter's body had grown cold. So the coroner takes one look at him and immediately thinks this man was murdered. So he asked the now two-time widow, Bell, what is this story here? Like how was he injured, how did this happen? And Bell tells the doctor it all went down like this. Last night, around 11pm, Peter, her new husband, went to put his shoes on to go outside and lock up the family farm. And while he was doing so, a meat grinder fell from the top shelf and hit him on his head. She says it knocked him to the ground, and at that point, Peter accidentally flipped over a pot of boiling brine and burned himself. He calls out to Bell in pain, so she runs to him, tends to his injuries, and once he was patched up, she brought him his night shirt so he could just go to sleep in the living room while she was upstairs asleep with the kids. Now around 3am, she wakes up to Peter calling for her again, saying his head is hurting. So Bell sent Jenny to the neighbor's house for help. Sadly, by the time she got back with the neighbor, Peter was gone. And as detailed as this story was, and even for it being 1902, this coroner isn't convinced. Yeah, I mean, her first husband dies. His wife dies, then the youngest child. And then now her second husband has died in the house. Coincidence? I'm not sure about that. So for one thing, Peter's wounds didn't match his wife's story. And rigor mortis didn't support the supposed time of death. So the next day, the doctor performed an official autopsy, and he discovered Peter actually had no burns at all on his body, but his nose was cut and broken, showing blunt force trauma. He also had a deep 1-inch wound above the back of his skull, which led the doctor to conclude that his cause of death was shock and pressure caused by that fracture to the back of his head. He's so suspicious, though, that he's not ready to leave it at that. He insisted on an inquiry just two days later, so now December 18, 1902. The 43-year-old widow, Bell, called her daughter Jenny as a witness. Jenny gave pretty much the exact same story as her mom to officials. In fact, it was so close that the doctor thinks Jenny might have been coached what to say before this inquiry. And he decided to press the widow to find out. So we asked, Bell, hey, did you receive life insurance from your husband's first death, implying that she was making a business out of being a black widow? And Bell becomes absolutely hysterical, okay? And although he has this nagging feeling with no hard evidence, the doctor is basically forced to retreat despite his beliefs. So he rules the death in accident, absolving the widow of wrongdoing, but not necessarily of suspicion. Yeah, because I mean, I guess it's not really his job as much as I'm sure he wants to press forward. Yeah. I mean, he's a doctor. Right. He's not a detective, though. Yeah. I get it. So locals in the area wondered for years if Bell was really the loving wife and mother that she appeared to be or something else. People did they know she was actually somebody else, a completely different person than the woman Peter thought he had married. The wonderful Norwegian cook that he knew as Bell was actually a serial criminal. Okay. So Bell was actually born named Brinhild Strusset. Oh, so her name's not even Bell. No, her name's Brinhild and she grew up in Norway. She was born on November 11, 1859 and she grows up in a big family on a pretty unimpressive arm. They didn't own the least and Brinhild contributed by collecting firewood as a kid. And then in 1874, when she was 14 years old, she took a job as a dairymaid for a neighbor and started earning extra money for the family and she did work hard. She became known around the area as sturdy and reliable. But then when she was just 17 years old, Brinhild got pregnant by a land owner's son and not wanting to marry someone below his status. The guy actually just beat her up in hopes of making her miscarry. Holy. She did. So after this entire experience at 17, Brinhild became bitter, which is definitely understandable. I think what's so crazy when we cover crimes from the early 1900s and even earlier is that status is so often a motive of murder, which we don't as often see today. No, I mean, status is still a thing now, but not like it was in the early, I mean, it was livelihood. It's not like it was. It's, yeah, it's way that status was everything actually. It was the way that you were able to flourish. It's the way you were raised. It's like everything was based off of status. Right. You know, exactly. Yeah. And it is so crazy. How in a lot of earlier cases that we cover, that is so often a motive for horrible crimes like this. So again, she is bitter, but what puzzled a lot of people in the area was pretty soon after this entire incident. The landowner's son actually became sick and eventually died, now he had previously been young and healthy. So people couldn't help wondering why they believe that Brinhild, who was vocally and obviously bitter, had something to do with the landowner's son's death. Oh, I have a hard time with this one. But no one had any proof, obviously, so life goes on. And in 1881, when Brinhild was 22, she left Norway and actually went to join her older sister Nelly, who had immigrated to Chicago. Now, like many immigrants, Brinhild took a new name upon arriving in America. She decided on Bell Peterson, which sounded more American to her. Now Bell, at this point, was 5 foot 10. She was over 200 pounds. She was very capable and sturdy and she immediately found work as a servant and started working toward her own American dream. Now, in March 1884, when she was 25 years old, Bell married fellow Norwegian immigrant, Mads Sorenson. Now Mads was a gentleman. He was taller than Bell at almost six feet. He was five years older. He worked as a night watchman at a department store and he gave Bell everything he could on his salary, a comfortable apartment, jewelry, nice clothes. I mean, they were both Norwegian immigrants trying to, you know, create a life together in America. But this wasn't enough for Bell. She wanted more, specifically she wanted to be a mom. So she and Mads tried, but she couldn't conceive. She brainstormed other ways that she could get a baby. Her sister, Nellie, had five, so Bell actually asked her sister, "Hey, can I adopt your youngest baby?" Now, Nellie's like, "No, you can't," which makes Belferious. That's kind of a, maybe it's normal, but that's kind of strange. I mean, that's really strange, honestly. That's weird. I think it's also strange to them because it causes a rift and they stop talking. Oh, yeah. Could you imagine being the sister? You're like, "Uh, no, you can't have my baby." Right. I don't know. So she doesn't stop looking for ways to get a child though. And finally in 1891, when she was 32 years old, one of Bell and Mads' neighbors becomes terminated. ill and Bell spotted an opportunity. She begged the woman to let her adopt her eight-month-old daughter, Jenny. At least temporarily. Like, you're dying. You're terminally ill. Let me just take care of her for you. I would, the reason it's messed up because it's so selfish. She's doing it for her. She's not doing it for the baby. Right. But this neighbor who's obviously struggling through their own things agrees. So Jenny became Bell and Mad's first child. Now several years later, after Jenny's birth mom had passed away, her birth father remarried and actually tried to take Jenny back. Bell's like, "No, I love her and she's mine. She's my baby." So the father took Bell to court and he lost because she had been raising Jenny since she was eight months old. So Bell won legal custody of Jenny and that whole process seems to have given her an idea. Between 1896 and 1898, Bell and Mads somehow came into four more children. You're a lot like, yes, I'm not going to say stole, but they somehow got their collecting children collecting. There you go. That's a good word. So sources conflict, but it seems like all of the children were adopted to died within the first five months of their lives, which is not completely unheard of back then. But what was strange is Bell actually had life insurance policies on these babies. I don't know, maybe it's a precaution. Mads apparently thought so because he's staying with Bell. That was all the way up until July 30th, 1898, when one day he came back from work very sick. It was just a cold and a headache, but Bell gave him something for it and sent her husband off to bed. But when she went back to check in on him later, Mads was dead. Bell called to the family doctor. He declared the cause of death a cerebral hemorrhage. And he asked to see the medicine that Bell had given Mads earlier that night. Bell's like, oh, doctor, I can't give it to you. I've thrown it away. And then she proceeded to collect on Mads life insurance policy. The third person in her family that has now died and she's collecting the policy on. She made a total of $5,000 off her first husband's death. Today, that would be about $192,000. She then proceeded to use this money to buy a 13 room farmhouse on 48 acres in northern Indiana. It sounds like she wants to collect children and be a single mom. Yeah. That seems like that's what's happening right now. This purchase, having all of these children without actually having birthed any of them. And then this purchase of this beautiful farmhouse on land that she now owns is quite the come up for the once poor Norwegian. And this is basically where she's at when Peter and the residents of their Indiana community get to know Bell. Okay. As we've already discussed, Bell is this well to do Norwegian widow to all of these people. And she did everything she could to keep up this image. She raised her kids and Peter's one remaining daughter. She took care of the farm until the day that Peter died on her living room floor. And then people started asking questions. It was just the doctor at first. But then one day, Bell got a visit from Peter's brother named Gust. And Gust wanted to make sure that Peter's life insurance policy paid out to his biological daughter, Bell's stepdaughter. Bell said, uh, sorry, brother. Peter had changed the policy to invest in a mining company, which would eventually make his daughter rich. And so Gust was like, great. Let me see the paperwork. Show me the shares. Feels like I don't have them. So he starts becoming suspicious of his brother's wife. Bell responded to Gust's concerns by inviting him to stay at the farm. She said he could help work on the land and look after his niece for as long as he wanted. But Gust decided on a different course of action. One night he packed up and ran kidnapping his five year old niece and taking her with him. I must have I don't blame him. He must have been a shock for Bell to wake up and find her stepdaughter missing. But she didn't end up taking action. After all, she still had three kids of her own to take care of not to mention this gigantic farm. So over the next two years, she tries to run things by herself. But by 1904, the farm was getting unmanageable. So Bell took out a want ad in a local Norwegian language newspaper seeking a farm worker. And it ended up being 30-year-old Olaf Lindblum who got the job. Olaf. Well, it was a Norwegian newspaper. It seems like such a Norwegian name. He just wanted to work there for the summer. Like in Frozen, Olaf wants to see what Frozen things do in summer. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. That's cute. Yeah, because they melt. Oh, he said I'd never been through a summer. Yeah. So Olaf moved onto the farm with everything he owned, including his $600 life savings and started working on the land. And obviously things soon get very steamy with him and his boss. Olaf started writing letters to his parents in Norway saying he met a woman that was his boss that he was now planning to marry. No, great. He's going to die. He's going to get killed. He also begins bragging about it when he goes out for a night on the town drinking. The whole town at this point basically knows that Bell had hired this man to come work on her farm and now he's telling everyone they're engaged. So people were surprised a little while later when Olaf suddenly disappeared. Oh my god. They asked Bell where he had gone and she tells different people different stories. People were curious, but Olaf was an outsider. So eventually they kind of just let it go and they noticed that Bell placed another ad and then another and every time that she hired a new Norwegian immigrant farmhand. He disappeared. They would write home about her and then disappear. That's insane. Mysteriously leaving their belongings and money behind. Now Bell would always say she didn't know where they went and she would just kind of help herself to everything they left behind. She had basically become the ultimate catfish as her tactics would soon show. The problem is yeah sure she's a catfish but she's killing people. Yeah. She's a grifter. Yeah. So eventually Bell started posting ads looking for love and money. She boasted about this beautiful farm and said the man would need to have some cash. She had a ton of potential suitors 8 to 10 letters a day from all over the country of men who wanted to come become her husband. It's like the modern it's like the modern day tender. Bachelor or bachelor. This is literally we're watching Bachelorette. I like this. In real time. So one man who replied was a 49 year old Norwegian farmer named Andrew Helgalean. Okay. I really looked up these names to try to figure out how to say them. So I hope I'm saying them right. Andrew had actually struggled since moving to the United States. He often missed Norway and Bell promised him here. Come move with me. We will have traditional Norwegian feast. We will be a Norwegian family. And she's like you won't be lonely anymore. Come, come quick and take all your money out of the bank and come move here as soon as possible. Okay. But Andrew isn't ready just yet. So she keeps moving potential suitors dropped by weekly to visit and prove their worth. And no matter how well the visits went, no one seemed to stay very long. And a lot of them left without taking their stuff. Bell practically collected trunks left behind by men during their quick visits and departures. I'm so confused. Literally her farmhouse soon had an entire storage room full of men's belongings that they had left at her house when they were coming to visit. So this went on until the summer of 1906 when Bell was now 47 years old. She noticed her beloved Jenny who was now 16 years old was getting a lot of attention. Jenny even had a new boyfriend. Someone who was taking her away from Bell and the farm. Obviously she's 16 years old and any 16 year old girl. So Bell didn't want to give her favorite daughter up to anyone. She announced she was sending Jenny to college in California. And when the time came to see Jenny off in December of 1906, she departed rather abruptly. She never said goodbye to anyone. She never wrote anyone letters. She never answered anyone's letters. It's kind of just like all the men who had visited the farm. The child Bell had once wanted so so badly. had simply disappeared. - What is happening? There's just no way she's just killing all these people. - Now, if Belle was torn up over her missing daughter, she didn't show it, she just kept looking for love, like continuing this on. By June 1907, she was still doing long distance with Andrew. This was the reluctant 49 year old farmer who hadn't decided to come visit yet. And at the same time, she also hired another guy, Ray Lampair. She was a local whose family had actually fallen from grace. Ray's dad was a justice of the peace who had lost it, basically becoming a drunk which back in these days was, again, not a good sign for your reputation. - Status. - Yes. And Ray didn't learn from his father's mistakes, even though he was a skilled carpenter, he had got drunk one night and gambled away all his money. Now, Belle, however, didn't seem concerned about this behavior. She invited him to live with her in the Grand Central Station Farmhouse, this was what she referred to it as. And that lasted until January 1908 when surprise, Andrew, her long distance boyfriend, finally decides I am going to move in with you, Belle. He arrived at the farm with his entire life savings sewn into his underwear. So Belle sent her side piece, Ray, who had no cash in his undies to sleep in the barn. She's like, you're going to keep working for me. They were hooking up. You're going to go sleep in the barn because Andrew, my main boyfriend, is coming to take your room. - Okay. - Now, Andrew probably felt like a winner at this point, but sadly for him, his honeymoon didn't last. By January 14th, Andrew had fallen ill and by the end of the day, he had vanished. So obviously, we know the pattern here. Belle places an ad in the paper. The guy would come being lured in with promises. He'd fall in love and then he'd disappear. - I'm just trying to figure out if all these people have died. Even her daughter, I mean, I guess her daughter, I don't even know if I can call her her daughter, but-- - I mean, she legally got custody, so. - Yeah, true, okay. - So here's the thing though. These disappearances, although being noticed, weren't investigated much because most of the men were immigrants without ties in the community. But this time, Ray got involved. This is the man who was living in the barn, who was the side piece, okay. This jilted carpenter was furious about being kicked out and replaced by Andrew. And when he got back that day and found that Andrew was now missing, his eyes kind of opened to who Belle really was. And remember, he is a local, his dad is a local. So angry that he was kicked out and then having this realization about who Belle is, he starts harassing Belle, implying to her that he knows what she was doing to the men who were coming to visit her. And Belle responded by firing him and chasing him off her property at gunpoint. She then proceeded to write a letter to local law enforcement telling them Ray was showing up to her house unwanted and she hired a new man to replace him. But none of that stopped Ray from sneaking onto her farm. So in March of 1908, Belle had Ray arrested for trespassing. So I just want to make it clear here, Ray isn't just doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He was in love with Belle and then scorned. He's now a man scorned and out for vengeance, which is why he is even sneaking onto her farm and getting trespassed. - Got it. - So she wrote a statement saying that he showed up almost every night drunk, harassed her and committed various small crimes on her property. Now Ray pleaded guilty and paid Belle $1 in fines, but he keeps showing up. - $1, okay. - So she had him arrested again two more times actually until finally this hard drinking son of a justice of the peace was put in jail. It's pretty safe to say that Andrew, Ray, and Belle, whether Andrew, who's now missing by the way, knew about it, it had kind of become this like love triangle where Ray really saw Andrew as his nemesis, but also Belle was now his nemesis. And it was an entire mess, okay, but around this time in March of 1908, Ray has been arrested. Andrew's brother sends a letter to Belle asking how Andrew is doing. So Belle writes back saying, "Oh, he's not here anymore. He actually went off looking for another sibling, a long-lost brother who was addicted to gambling, so he's not gonna be back for a while." And Andrew's brother's like, this is so far-fetched. So he wrote again asking Belle to send Andrew's letter, explaining all of this so he could read his brother's own words. - Well, imagine sending letters would be way easier to ghost people. - Oh yeah. - He ghost anyone, you could use an excuse, no one would ever know. - Well, and that's why she is getting away with this so easy. - Oh, 100%, yeah. And Belle's like, oh, I actually don't have the letter anymore because Ray, this guy who was working on the farm when Andrew was here, he stole all of Andrew's letters. - This is a turning into a complete cluster. - 100%. So it's at this point where Andrew's brother is now sus, wondering where Andrew is. That Ray is now going to trial for his crimes against Belle. And Belle shows up, she acts distraught on the stand. And honestly, Belle had fully convinced her community that she was a grieving widow basically being harassed by this local hardened criminal. And as a result, Ray was found guilty and charged $19. That's about $620 today. Now, not surprising, this doesn't deter him within a week, Belle has him arrested again for creeping around her hog pen. - Okay, okay, that's so cool. - And as this. - That's my creeping around a hog pen. - Entire mess with the pigs is going down. - I'm talking about that. - Belle receives another letter from Andrew's brother saying, you know what, I'm coming into town, I'm tracking Andrew down. - Okay. - Belle begins to panic. She's like, okay, sure, I'll help you in any way possible. And it's at this point, she also starts telling everyone in town that she thinks Ray is gonna burn her house down. He had been threatening her for a while. She feared her life. And it was just the beginning of her final story. On Monday, April 27th, 1908, Belle who was now 49 years old, visited her lawyer to get her will in order. She left all of her property to her children, Mertle, Lucy and Philip. No mention of Jenny in this will. - Yeah, because Jenny's dead. - Jenny's 100% dead. - And no one's like, what about your daughter, Jenny, who's in college in California, whatever. And she made contingency plans for if any or all of them were to die. Now, after the lawyer, she went to the bank to put the will in her safe deposit box. Then she went to the grocery store. She bought candy, cake and a toy train to give the children basically a treat. She also bought two gallons of kerosene. She went home, she ate with her family and then hung out in the living room with the kids and Joseph, okay, he's a new farmhand. She had replaced right with, okay, so there's another guy. Now, living at the house, but he's not important to the story, okay, it's just that he was also there with the family. And all seemed good. The next morning, however, one of Belle's neighbors gets up at 4 a.m. to make breakfast and notices flames pouring from the farmhouse. - That's crazy. What a coincidence that she bought the gallons of kerosene. She woke up her husband, son and brother-in-law, the men all ran over to find Joseph, the new armhand, trying to split the front door with an axe. He had woken up just in time to escape his bedroom before the ceiling had caved in. He was now trying to get back into the house to rescue Belle and her kids. Now, as the fire grew, there was nothing more than men could do. The farmhouse started to collapse. So Joseph rode off to alert the authorities and he returned at 5 a.m. with the sheriff and volunteer fire department, but by then it was too late. By daybreak, Belle's 13 room farmhouse was just a pile of embers. Joseph, the neighbors and some onlookers, poured water over the ashes to cool them down and the firemen found signs of a concentrated blaze by the seller door, which told them this fire was probably arson. Now, some begin to whisper that Belle had started the fire herself, but many knew about her problems with Ray and he begins being named the primary suspect. Well, she 100% did it, but that makes sense. He dispatched his deputies to pick Ray up and meanwhile, the excavation team found four bodies huddled together in the ruins, three children and one adult female. And that trumped the naysayers. Everyone's like, look, Belle was a hero. She died. She died trying to save her kids. it's crazy. So soon the story hit. the newspapers. Reports praised Bell as the loving mother she'd always claimed to be and blasted Ray calling him a firebug, a maniac and a murderer. The papers gave all the grizzly details of the bodies, but the most important was that Bell's remains had no head, so they couldn't technically identify the body. Some speculated Bell had been decapitated by the flames, other suspected she'd been murdered and the fire was a cover up. In both situations, Ray was to blame. He was charged with murder and arson. The next day, he pleaded not guilty and awaited trial. Meanwhile, folks continued searching the ruins, hoping to find Bell's missing head. So days go by. By Sunday, May 3, most people had given up. The only searchers left were Joseph and a single neighbor. So they were the ones on site the day Andrew's brother shows up to the farmhouse to find his brother. The farmhouse that is now burned down and apparently everyone is dead. So he'd actually seen news and the fire and thought showing up to the farm was just the best way to find his brother. He was hoping that Andrew would be there, but when he wasn't, he also begins digging through the ashes and at first he finds nothing, but as he reached the edge of the yard, he had an idea. He asked Joseph if any new plots had been dug on the grounds recently. Joseph was like, actually yeah, I've dug several trash pits in the hog pen. Bell had planned to bury fish and tomato cans there. So all three of the men go there and start digging and as soon as they start digging, they discovered the dirt smelled putrid, much worse than tomato cans. And then three feet down, Andrew's brother hit something soft and at the bottom of the pit, he saw a torn gunny sack filled with human remains. Now somehow the men managed to excavate the body and they laid it out in the barn and they discovered it was Andrew. Oh my gosh. Okay. They had found his brother. Bell had lied to them to all of them. She wasn't this loving widow. She was a murderer. And with that revelation in mind, Joseph runs for the corner and the sheriff and he's like, uh, stop, stop. We genuinely do not know this woman and I dug more pits. Like I'm pretty sure that I dug holes that she put dead people in. We need to begin excavation. So everyone goes back to the hog pen and they begin digging up body parts and buy the afternoon. They had what the corner judged to be four victims, two men, one woman and one teenage girl, these bodies had been cut into pieces due to the state of the remains, the adults couldn't be ID'd, but the teenage girl had tuffs of matted blonde hair and all of the friends and family figured this was Jenny. So all thoughts that Bell was a hero saving her children dissipated. People begin calling her different names, Lady Bluebeard and Hell's Bell. By May 6, the excavation team had found nine sets of remains and I'll just fast forward the final grand total of bodies found in this hog pen was 14. That's insane. 14 dead bodies. But the head of the woman found in the fire that is still missing. So obviously next people begin to think did Bell die in this fire or had she just taken one of the bodies of the 14 people she could killed, maybe 15 and put them with her children that she actually did kill in the fire. So the mayor goes to the press with all of this information. He says Bell lured in single men and widowers with her want ads stole their money and then poisoned them dismembered their bodies and buried them in her yard. Even though all of this happens, Ray has still been arrested and charged with the murder of Bell and her three kids. So he ends up going to trial and basically everyone goes on the stand and is like yeah, we've discovered that Bell was a really bad person and Ray most likely didn't do this and we've also never found Bell's body like we've never officially been able to identify her in any of the bodies that were found it took the jury a day and a half to come up with a verdict. They found Ray guilty of arson, weird, but not murder. That's really weird. So he's given a $5,000 fine and a sentence between two and 21 years. He didn't last anywhere that long. Ray actually died in prison on December 3rd, 1909. They basically killed this guy. Some believe the truth of what happened to Bell died with him, but others think the truth might still be out there that if Bell didn't die that night in the fire whose body was in the ruins and where did Bell go? What's her new name? And did she have a next victim? And that is literally the end of the story. Kind of crazy because I bet you she's still out there. Well, I mean, she's not alive anymore, but for sure she escaped through her body in there, killed her kids and now she's gone somewhere. The town gossip is that Ray did not start the fire and kill anyone and Bell escaped and started a new life somewhere. All right, you guys, that was our episode today and we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.